Page 146.

“Whenever we see anybody coming, we can tie Jim hand and foot with a rope, and lay him in the wigwam and show this handbill and say we captured him up the river, and were too poor to travel on a steamboat, so we got this little raft on credit from our friends and are going down to get the reward. Handcuffs and chains would look still better on Jim, but it wouldn’t go well with the story of us being so poor. Too much like jewelry. Ropes are the correct thing – we must preserve the unities, as we say on the boards.”

            Within this passage, we see the duke “taking charge” of the dilemma in traveling in daylight with a slave passenger when he suggests playing up Jim’s external appearance in order to “protect” him and the rest of the gang from the threat of onlookers. It appears to be the perfect plan as it would allow the whole crew to travel freely down the river; however, it is a significant turning point within the realm of Huck and Jim’s mentality on the raft, that in order to disguise these runaways with an airtight alibi, it is Jim who suffers most: “…tie Jim hand and foot with a rope, and lay him in the wigwam and show this handbill and say we captured him up the river.”

            Where once the raft represented a seemingly neutral and safe space for Jim and Huck to develop their relationship and explore the boundaries of their status, these other two imposing “rapscallions” suddenly change the dynamic, rhythm, and symbolism of the raft altogether. Very quickly, Jim’s comfortable nakedness is embellished with ropes and it acts as the blatant reminder that the days where he and Huck could live “freely” on their raft together are now over. The very scheme that is put together to protect Jim is a reflection of what is literally happening to him. The utopian raft bubble is burst and the hierarchy of each character’s status becomes pronounced and utilized as it appears that the raft is not unaffected by the force of societal standards and morals anymore.

            Furthermore, another issue this passage brings up is the theme of taking on and off different identities to play such and such a role. The characters made up that they “…got this little raft on credit from our friends and are going down to get the reward,” but just that they could simply adopt such a story and feel completely confident about it illustrates what I think is the vast disparity of black and white privilege. It’s ironic that their confidence is met with the townspeople’s trust and acceptance just based on their skin color but by the by, it is the duke and king who are the deceitful swindlers, while Jim, the man society expects to be a wretched schemer, wants nothing more than to find his way to freedom with as little trouble as possible.  

There also lies a clear insensitivity in the lines where the duke says, “handcuffs and chains would look still better on Jim, but it wouldn’t go well with the story of us being so poor. Too much like jewelry. Ropes are the correct thing…” This demonstrates the duke’s nonchalant attitude toward Jim's dignity and how it ultimately makes no difference to him whether Jim wears handcuffs or ropes as long as it gets the job done. If anything, I found it appalling that the duke would recommend handcuffs and chains to be more suitable for Jim, as if he were saying it like a compliment that the shine of metal would accent Jim more like an accessory than the image of enslavement that the coarse rope would have. The irony is that regardless to what the material is made out of - it all has the same purpose. But where the duke sees these bindings as a part of a mere costume, I think as the reader we recognize the foreboding symbol and reminder of Jim’s past, present, and future as a slave.

References:

Twain, Mark. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. New York: Penguin, 2003. Print.